SOPYNE, Ukraine – The day after Ukrainian and Russian leaders talked peace, Russian forces shelled the village of Shyrokyne in Donetsk Oblast, starting fires, according to eyewitnesses. There were reports of fatalities.
Black smoke was seen on Sept. 4 from the nearby village of Sopyne, where a highway connects Mariupol with Novoazovsk, which has been under control of Russian troops for nearly a week.
Three soldiers were leaving the battlefield on foot. Two of them were foreign fighters of the Azov Battalion – one from Croatia, another from France. Slightly wounded, they said they were bombarded by artillery and saw armored vehicles shelling them. They were sure the attack was done by Russian troops, not rebels. “They were too good,” one of them told the Kyiv Post, asking anonymity because of safety fears.
Olena, a 59-year-old worker at a water purifying plant located near Shyrokyne, said heavy shelling started there at about 11 am and lasted for several hours with few stoppages. “The village is now burning,” she said, fearing to give her last name.
Visiting Shyrokyne on Sept. 3 the Kyiv Post saw numerous fortifications of Ukrainian troops there. The residents feared that their houses could suffer if the hostilities start. Village head Oleksandr Luchenko said the villages didn’t have any special bomb shelters and were preparing their cellars in case of attack.
Olena said many Ukrainian military vehicles showed up in Shyrokyne just days before the village was shelled. Now she was planning to leave Mariupol along with her granddaughter. “But where is it now safe to go?!” she said.
Later a woman received a call from a colleague who said that Shyrokyne was still controlled by Ukrainian troops.
Serhiy Taruta, the governor of Donetsk Olbalst who is now based in Mariupol, tried to placate city residents by reporting that no more than four tanks and some 40 Russian soldiers rushed to Shyrokyne from Novoazovsk. It was no more than “combat reconnaissance,” Taruta said.
Andriy Lysenko, Ukraine’s military spokesman, said the Russian artillery shelled fortifications in Shyrokyne from the village of Bezimenne, located 34 kilometers from Mariupol.
People in Mariupol were worried. Dozen of cars queued at petrol stations. Nevertheless, hundreds rallied in the evening in the city center to hail the initiation of fighters of the Mariupol Battalion, organized to defend the city of nearly 500,000 people.
The Mariupol hospitals were busy with wounded fighters. A medic soldier of Azov Battalion with the nickname Bartek brought one fighter wounded in the stomach and was waiting for results of his surgery. Azov commander Andriy Biletsky reported that his battalion had some people killed but didn’t specify the number of victims.
Then two soldiers brought his comrade, whose face was wounded by shrapnel. They were border guards who were trapped under the shelling near Shyrokyne.
“There were tanks, armored vehicles and we had nothing apart from Kalashnikovs,” one of them said.
“That’s how a ‘Russian-style’ ceasefire looks like,” Bartek from the Azov Battalion told him in response.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
Editor’s Note: This article is produced with support from www.mymedia.org.ua, funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and implemented by NIRAS and BBC Media Action, as well as Ukraine Media Project, managed by Internews and funded by the U.S.Agency for International Development. Kyiv Post+ is a special project covering Russia’s war against Ukraine and the aftermath of the Euromaidan Revolution. Content is solely the responsibility of the Kyiv Post.
